Monday, November 28, 2011

In this SHOCK! catalog series, I will be skipping the individual film entries which follow page 8 (unnumbered in the original), placing, instead, each at the end of the corresponding SHOCK! film that may be reviewed on the blog.

So we then arrive at the last three pages of the unnumbered catalog.

Order forms for stills, ad mats, and balops. What's a balop, you ask? It's a slide or card bearing a picture or other visual material for projection in television.

Sunday, November 13, 2011

The next page in Screen Gems SHOCK! promotion book contains advice on "how to excite your public."

One direct audience participation gimmick is to consider what you would cook should a monster come to your house for dinner. (I'm sure we've hosted many a monster at a meal.) The public would be encouraged to send in their menus, from which a winning menu would be selected and then served at a restaurant to people in the city with the name of Frankenstein! According to the writer of the text, there were 13 Frankensteins in New York City at the time. I wonder what the number would have been in smaller cities?

An exploitation item has a "mummy" escaping from a museum that's having an Egyptian exhibit. When the mummy is interviewed by the pseudo-press, he states that he made his escape in order to get his "SHOCK treatment." Crazy mummy.

Another exploitation tactic mentions dressing up a woman in the style of a Charles Adams (sic) cartoon, clearly a reference to Charles Addams' main female character who would be named Morticia when THE ADDAMS FAMILY TV series was broadcast in the 1960s. The Morticia character was already iconic at the time. (Interestingly, Vampira, who took her look from the Addams character and who had been hosting horror films prior to SHOCK!, is not mentioned.) "Monster Society of America" membership cards would be handed out by this female character and the monster riding with her in a hearse.